Last year, spring or early summer, I was asked by a neighbor to dispatch a copperhead snake who had decided to curl up under a picnic table. She has small children and small dogs, so leaving the poisonous snake alone was not an option.
I didn't feel like digging our my CCI .22 LR shot loads (nor did I want to use them since they are hard to come by nowadays), so just grabbed my Ruger 22/45 Lite, mounted the suppressor to it, and dispatched the snake.
I then decided I needed to pick up .410, which I did a few months later. However, though much better for dispatching snakes, it is still too loud for use in my neighborhood.
Then a recent post here got me thinking. If a .22 shot she'll was good for snakes up close, a .327 Federal Magnum should be much better, given a bigger case capacity.
I looked on the Web and found a recommendation to use 3 grains of Alliant Unique. I used a CCI 500 small pistol promer, the 3 grains of Unique, a dry felt wad, then filled the case with #9 lead shot. I then poured it out to measure it, and looking and behold, it was exactly 50 grains! I topped the shot off with a thin card wad, and sealed it with a touch of glue.
Well, I wasn't patient enough to wait to try it, so put a blank piece of paper on my indoor target box (in my basement), and crudely drew a quick snake on it. I stepped back about 7 feet and let the shot go. Here are the results:
Barely any report at all! Like a "cat's sneeze" load for shot. This will work great for snakes and won't disturb the neighbors (or cause an unwanted visited from John Law).
Now I need to load up at least a dozen more!
